Smoke Photography

I've seen photos of smoke and have wondered in awe how such awesome shots were achieved. So, I set out to take some of my own and let me tell you... it's a lot easier than it looks.

I'm going to walk you through the process and what is required, but first here is one of the final products so you know what we are aiming for:



Though you might be able to get similar results with less, here is what I used:

• Incense
• Black backdrop
• Some cardboard and a little tape
• Nikon SB24 external flash
• Remote flash triggers
• Canon XTI

The initial step was to setup my "studio" by hanging my black backdrop (in this case it was a sleeping bag liner) over my kitchen counter.

Then, I took a cardboard food box and cut it in such a way to create two "gobos" (which is a fancy photography term for thing-that-blocks-light). We just want the flash to fire onto the smoke, so these gobos are used to stop light from the flash spilling onto the background or directly into the lens.



Here is the perspective from where the camera will be shooting:

I dialed in my camera's shutter speed to its max sync speed (1/200 sec) and then set my aperture pretty high (f18-22) in order to maximize my depth of field because focusing on the smoke is difficult and we want the picture as sharp and in focus as possible. Then I set my flash at a high enough power level to properly expose the smoke.

Later I wanted to snap more photos and not wait for my flash to recycle, so I turned it lower and opened the aperture a bit more (f8). This traded depth of field for faster shooting. In the end, the photos might have suffered but it helped me learn from mistakes quicker.

Here is our example shot as taken directly from the camera:

Then, I brought it into my photo editting software and inverted the colors so the background would be white (and the smoke becomes black/gray). I adjusted the contrast and air brushed out stray smoke that I didn't want. Then I added the color and cropped to the size I wanted.

Here are some more examples: